The Inner Path: 3

Voice One (soliloquy): Then if this mind—through which I think, feel—is itself the enemy, who then is the friend?
Voice Two (in tranquil depth): Mind is the world. Mind is illusion. Mind is the chain of birth and death. Where mind is not, there you are.

Both together (in unison, as though touching silence itself): Knowledge and ignorance—both empty. Dream and waking—both delusion. Practice and attainment—both maya. Like the horn of a deer—this world is nothing but imagination.

Voice Two (final lines, breaking through silence): And that silence itself is Brahman. There is no world, no God, no liberation—all is the illusion of imagination. Mind creates this universe, and that same mind is delusion. Where mind ceases, there I awaken—formless, nameless, the eternal I.

Voice One (doubtful of its own being, questioning in self-inquiry): Who am I? This body decays, the mind trembles with rage and fear! Then where is that "I" which abides beneath all change?
Voice Two (steady, unheated, luminous with truth): You are that—which is not body, not mind, not memory. You are consciousness—formless, infinite, fearless. You are Brahman.
Voice One (in gentle wonder): I? Brahman? This frail and meager body-bound man?
(Voice Two): No, it is the very thought that you are limited because you are human—that itself is maya. You transcend even that thought. "I am Brahman"—this realization alone is truth's dwelling.
(Voice One): Then is this realization enough? No practice, no worship?
Voice Two (in soundless tone, as though eternally flowing): "I am Brahman"—in this meditation, all renunciation is complete. In this realization, all mantras dissolve. This understanding itself is the endless sacrifice, the ritual of consciousness.
(Voice One): Then does this "I" become all-pervading? Is this I the universe, is this I the void?
(Voice Two): You are light, you are boundless, you are pure, you are the beginning and the beginningless. You are that which has no start, no end—you are that which is only "I".

Both together (in measured pace and profound rhythm, as though self-revelation): "I am Brahman"—in this awareness, all delusion dissolves. This realization is the source of liberation, this I is infinite consciousness. I am not the body of clay, not the mind full of affection. I am eternal, I am unchanging, bound by no birth's shore. "I am Brahman"—this very sound burns away the seeds of illusion. Knowledge, practice, ritual and rule—leaving all behind, I awaken.

Voice One (in eager tone, eager to know the Vedic way): Ghee in the fire, mantras, flame, offerings—is this not the ritual of offering all to Brahman? Is that fire the sacred path?
Voice Two (in calm, self-assured tone): For one who knows—"I am Brahman"—his silence itself is the oblation, consciousness itself is the offering, and abiding in the self is his sacrifice.